Growing Up Out of Ignorance

Coming off the first week of December I know a lot of people preparing for the holidays, and the celebration of another year’s end. Looking forward, I’m also slightly irked by the fact I’m about to be 23 come February. Incidentally, around this time we find a lot of people reflecting on their lives and how big of a difference one year has made in their progress. Did you make leaps? Perhaps you’re still stuck in the same place, feeling trapped. I guess you could say I’m in between, looking at the horizon knowing there’s something on the other side.

My last semester at university is coming to an end. So I’ve really been reflecting, haha! Reflecting on growth, and how much growth is left. It’s interesting how muc

h we can change in our early 20s. I’ve grown distant from a lot of people. Some just found different paths, grew in different directions, and others..well it’s best we don’t reconnect. I find that as I learn more about this cosmic circle called life I really can’t find myself with the same people I used to hang around.

You see, the conditioning we suffer from society is one of the hardest habits to let go. I still find myself dabbling in my mind with the constraints that have been imposed on it. One such example is homophobia. As we proceed to a more LGBT friendly world, I see a lot of old heads who still refuse to let go. Shit, I used to feel the same way in high school. But I came around, opened my hand. This also extends to my views on feminism, and its importance right now in our moral views. With both these topics, I used to shield myself in this fake masculinity I was thought to uphold. That’s why I can’t find myself around the same people no more.

You can go to school, work hard, get a nice job, be a shining human by society’s standards, but is that enough? That in itself is one battle you have to win, but what about the battle within? It’s definitely uncomfortable at times taking a look inside at some of your opinions and asking yourself why you have

them. What I’m getting at, is that I’m finding it harder to be around the people who are so willfully ignorant, who keep preaching toxic ideals of the past, without much regard for how it pools together in the grand scheme of things. I was watching a video of a rapper from near my city on Instagram the other day. He’s been around for a while, an OG if you will, and I got a lot of respect for him. But I could see the generational gap when I watched his video, and how that could really cause friction. He was talking about women deservedly being treated like a slut for “dressing like a slut” and then bashed Amber Rose. While I could see why he may think this way, seeing as he was more than 10 years older than me, it also disappointed me to know that youth would be looking at him as a source of confirmation. We can’t make progress if some of the professors still refuse to adapt their teachings.

On a brighter note, I finally paid the registration fee for my trademark application, which has been completed since September. Very excited to be taking this step in legitimatizing my brand. Now it’s just a matter of waiting for review.